8.  The applicant was born in 1967 and is currently staying in the Netherlands.
9.  On 8 May 2001 the applicant arrived in the Netherlands, where on 21 May 2001 he applied for asylum (verblijfsvergunning asiel voor bepaalde tijd) at the asylum application centre (aanmeldcentrum) at Schiphol. A first interview with an official of the Immigration and Naturalisation Department of the Ministry of Justice took place that same day, in order to establish the applicant's identity, nationality and travel route. The next day he was interviewed regarding the reasons for his request for asylum. The applicant submitted the following.
10.  After completing his eighteen months' military service on 1 December 1995, the applicant was again called up during a general mobilisation in April 1998. He served as a soldier in an anti-tank unit and fought in the war against Ethiopia.
11.  Although the war ended on 13 June 2000, demobilisation did not commence until considerably later because the Eritrean authorities feared further military incursions by the Ethiopians. In August 2000 a meeting was held with the applicant's battalion, consisting of between 5,000 and 7,000 men, in order to evaluate its performance in the war. According to the applicant, it was customary for such meetings to be held, and they allowed the higher army echelons to cover up their mistakes by putting the blame for an unsuccessful campaign on the soldiers. During this meeting the commanders said that the soldiers had not fought well. The applicant spoke up and said that this was because the commanders had insisted that hungry, thirsty and tired soldiers should continue fighting at the front, which had resulted in casualties. He said that his unit should have been replaced or strengthened. Other soldiers present at the meeting also voiced criticism, saying, for example, that there had not been enough weapons. When the applicant had spoken out, the other soldiers had vociferously supported him and an argument had ensued.
12.  For some time after the meeting, the applicant had the feeling that the army authorities were keeping an eye on him; for example, he thought he was being followed whenever he visited other units, and he was denied permission to go into town. On 5 December 2000, by which time he thought everything had been forgotten, he was summoned to the battalion's headquarters. There, he was informed that he had incited the soldiers. He was made to hand over his weapons and was detained in an underground cell for almost five months. He was neither interviewed, nor charged, nor brought before a military tribunal.
13.  On 20 April 2001 he was put into a jeep, with a driver and a guard who were armed. He was neither handcuffed nor bound. During the drive, they happened upon a military vehicle that had had an accident. Both the driver and the guard got out of the car to see if they could lend assistance. The applicant, left alone, seized the opportunity and escaped through the back of the car.
14.  The applicant made his way unhindered to Sudan, avoiding official border posts. An acquaintance of his in Khartoum brought him into contact with a travel agent, who arranged for a passport and air tickets. Accompanied by the travel agent, the applicant flew to Belgium via Syria and another, unspecified European country. From Brussels they took a train to Breda in the Netherlands. There, the travel agent told the applicant they had reached their destination. He asked him to hand back the passport and to report to a police station.
15.  On 23 May 2001 the Deputy Minister of Justice (Staatssecretaris van Justitie), applying an accelerated procedure, rejected the applicant's request for asylum. His failure to submit any document capable of establishing his identity, nationality or travel itinerary was held to affect the plausibility of his statements. Moreover, the Deputy Minister considered that the applicant's account of his alleged escape lacked credibility: it was hard to believe that someone who had been kept in detention for four months should have been transported unrestrained and been able to get away without being stopped by his guards, both of whom were alleged to have left him alone in the back of an open jeep in order to look at a traffic accident. The applicant was further held not to have substantiated his alleged detention. The comments he had allegedly made at the meeting in August 2000 were not of such a confrontational nature that he had well-founded reasons to fear persecution on that account, the more so bearing in mind that his comments did not particularly deviate from the opinion of the superiors to whom he claimed to have addressed them. Moreover, the applicant himself had stated that he was not the only soldier to have voiced criticism, yet neither had it been alleged, nor had it appeared, that any of those other soldiers had experienced problems as a result of their comments. The applicant had also not explained why he had not been arrested until four months later and had been left undisturbed in the meantime.
16.  The applicant lodged an appeal with the Regional Court (arrondissementsrechtbank) of The Hague, sitting in Amsterdam, and also applied to the President of that court for a provisional measure staying his expulsion. Pending the outcome of these proceedings, the applicant submitted a written statement by a certain Mr Khalifa, to the effect that Mr Khalifa's son had been executed in Eritrea in October 2000 after he had been staying with his mother for three months without having obtained prior permission from his army commanders. He also submitted an identity card, a military identity card, a driving licence and a marriage certificate. On 18 June 2001 the President of the Regional Court rejected the application for a provisional measure and, finding that further investigation could not reasonably contribute to the clarification of the case, also dismissed the appeal. The President considered that the applicant's alleged desertion and his resulting fear of disproportionate punishment had not been established in a sufficiently plausible manner. It was unlikely that the army should still have been mobilised at the time of the applicant's escape in April 2001, given that the war had ended in June 2000 and that the army, by the applicant's own account, had evaluated its performance in the war at a meeting in August 2000. The applicant's claim that he stood accused of incitement was based on pure supposition. In view of the ease with which the applicant had allegedly managed to escape, the President further found it unlikely that the (army) authorities wished to harm him. Thus, finding the applicant's account neither credible nor plausible, the President deemed it unnecessary to hear Mr Khalifa as a witness.
17.  The applicant lodged a further appeal (hoger beroep) with the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State (Afdeling Bestuursrechtspraak van de Raad van State), arguing, inter alia, that further investigation of the case, and in particular of the question whether the Eritrean army had been demobilised at the time of his desertion, was called for and feasible. If it turned out that the army had still been mobilised in April 2001, the reasoning adopted by the President of the Regional Court as to the lack of credibility and plausibility of the applicant's account would no longer stand up. The applicant also applied for a provisional measure allowing him to await the outcome of his further appeal in the Netherlands. He withdrew this application on 6 July 2001 in view of the relevant case-law of the Administrative Jurisdiction Division.
18.  On 16 July 2001 the Administrative Jurisdiction Division dismissed the further appeal. It held that the applicant's appeal to the Regional Court had not been dismissed for reasons relating solely to the mobilisation, but also for reasons relating to the applicant's account of his arrest and escape. Given the conclusions reached by the President of the Regional Court to the effect that the Deputy Minister had not been wrong in describing the applicant's account as not credible, he (the President) had been entitled to decide not to hear evidence from Mr Khalifa as a witness. The fact that it was not in dispute that the applicant had served in the army did not affect this ruling.